How fast must a meter stick be moving if its length is observed to shrink to 0.5m?

Question

Zayden Copeland

Physics

14 June, 04:19

How fast must a meter stick be moving if its length is observed to shrink to 0.5m?

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Zachariah Harris · Answer 1

This is relativistic length contraction by the looks of it ... there's a term which goes something like gamma = 1/{root[1-v^2/c^2]} which is applied to one of the lengths (the one in the rest frame, possibly) to obtain the relativistic contraction in the moving frame. If it were lmoving=lrestxgamma then 0.5=gammax1 so gamma = 0.5 and then there's a load of algebra.

Problem is I can't remember the way round these things going off the top of my head ...